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FILM CRITIQUE:
"About a Boy" is a wonderfully thought provoking movie as well as being both very serious and very funny, sometimes
at the same time.
"About a Boy" is about a boy, but which one? The older, very immature one with all the toys and gadgets, or
the younger, more mature one who is picked on at school and constantly worries about his suicidally depressed mother? Perhaps
one, the other, or both.
Most men have mixed feelings about Hugh Grant with his "Golly, gee, shucks" little boy Brit bashfulness, his
wavy shocks of hair falling into his face, and that affected stutter that can grow tiresome at times.
He has been in some awfully good movies like "Four Weddings and a Funeral"(1994), "Sense and Sensibility"(1995,
my favorite), and "Notting Hill"(1999), but most of us guys would consider these movies to be chick flicks, no matter
how funny they might be. Well, rest easy, because Hugh Grant plays an off type character in this movie for the first time
since his earlier thriller role as a doctor in "Extreme Measures"(1996).
Nicholas Hoult is amazing as the young Marcus, who is always a kid and always believable as that young child. In short,
he is totally convincing and you find yourself believing in the character and not in the actor playing that character.
Toni Collette has moved from "Muriel's Wedding"(1999) to "Emma"(1996) to the recent "Changing
Lanes"(2002), where she played a young legal assistant, to her role in this role as a loving, though clueless, unkempt,
and suicidal mother. What a variety of roles and challenges to her acting abilities and she succeeds at all of them without,
surprisingly enough, looking the same in any of them. Like Cary Elwes, she disappears into her roles and makes each one unique.
Great work!
Great movie, one of the best of the year. Don't miss it!
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FILM SYNOPSIS:
He still looks like the same Hugh Grant, but in this movie he is a rather aimless lout. It's not that he is a totally
unlikable person, it's just that he has stayed in the "Peter Pan" phase of his life and has shown little inclination
for growth and maturity, intellectual or otherwise.
One of his favorite television shows is the original British version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" and
the author of the phrase "No man is an island" is one of the questions. Will is convinced the phrase comes from
Jon Bon Jovi, the singer, rather than John Donne, the poet. It's obvious that he has read neither Donne nor Hemingway's "For
Whom the Bell Tolls."
Hugh Grant as Will is a bachelor slacker who is wealthy enough to live just as he pleases. And he pleases to do as little
as possible except for organizing each day into half hour "units" of light bachelor duties.
Bathing, for example, is accorded one "unit," while shopping for food and drink is two "units." Daily
lunches out are very definitely worth two "units." And that afore-mentioned "Millionaire" show is also
a daily unit.
It turns out that his father had written a treacly Christmas carol, "Santa's Super Sleigh," and Will has been
able to live very well off the royalties from that song without ever having to work a day in his life. Life is wonderful,
except for the annoying Christmas season every year when he is forced to listen to that detested song being broadcast everywhere
he goes while also having to settle for the company of only a good rental movie on Christmas Day.
His only ambition is to have all the latest toys and gadgets in his bachelor flat, along with that nice little Audi TT
sitting outside waiting to be taken out for a spin. He also considers lovely women to be one of his favorite accessories,
but suitable only for wining, dining, and loving. He is sequentially monogamous, which means that as soon as the subject of
commitment comes up, the lady of the moment is taken out to a nice restaurant for lunch and unceremoniously dumped.
In short, Hugh Grant plays the kind of role that we used to fantasize about before marriage and settling down with a bunch
of screaming, squalid expensive little monsters, a future condition that our spouses somehow seemed to make a more viable
proposition at the time of our proposal. Kinda makes you feel nostalgic, doesn't it?
Will is having dinner with some married friends one evening, and the wife starts in on Will as to how much he is missing
in life by not being married. After looking at the soiled couch and hearing the child whine, Will is equally convinced that
he has the best of all possible worlds just the way he is.
Then the wife and her husband spring a serious request on Will that he be the godfather of their baby daughter. The mere
thought of assuming any kind of responsibility is anathema to Will, and he declines immediately by asking them if they really
understand just what kind of a godfather he would be.
Well, first of all, Will explains, he would forget all her birthdays up
until she turned 18, at which point he would take her out for a drink and then maybe try to "shag" her.
He delivers this statement as a nonchalant point of fact which is very funny to us but alternatively shocking and horrifying
to the young parents. You watch the cloud of horror creep across their faces as they develop a mental image of this possibility,
while also realizing that there is more than a little truth in Will's rather matter of fact statement. But Will is just being
Will, totally honest and totally irresponsible, and that is just the way he likes it.
It is now time for Will to dump his latest girlfriend at a lunch in public where there won't be the threat of too many
tears or too many recriminations. Just as he starts in on his well practiced speech breaking off their relationship, she shocks
him by turning the tables on him and dumping him first. It turns out that this girlfriend of the moment dumping Will is a
mother with a young child who has been single for too short a period of time after her divorce to jump back into a serious
relationship, so she wants out, and now, before things get too serious.
Upon further reflection, Will decides that he may have hit upon the perfect solution here, which is to date recent divorcees,
knowing that few of them will be ready for commitment while just about all of them will be looking for a good time. But where
to meet the recently divorced women with young children? Will happens upon a poster for "SPAT" - Single Parents
Alone Together, a support group that he quickly decides to attend.
At the first meeting he explains that his irresponsible wife has left him with little two year old "Ned," and
his inviting manner warms all their maternal hearts. Most affected is the very attractive Suzie (Victoria Smurfit), and the
two of them hook up almost immediately. Of course, Will has to play along, a euphemism for lying, with his ruse that little
Ned is off visiting his mother again when he makes plans to meet Suzie for an afternoon at the park.
She has a good friend named Fiona (Toni Collette), who has plans for the day and Suzie has offered to take her young son,
Marcus (Nicholas Hoult), along. Fiona had baked a bread roll that has turned into a virtual stone, so young Marcus takes the
inedible block of bread and starts throwing pieces to the ducks in the pond.
Tiring of the effort necessary to tear this monstrosity apart into duck sized edible pieces, he hurls the whole thing
into the pond and kills a duck in the process. Upon being questioned by a park guard, Marcus is about to panic when Will comes
to his rescue by schmoozing the guard out of filing any charges. It is at this point that the very lonely Marcus begins to
realize that he may have a friend and a father figure in Will.
Will, of course, is oblivious to this turn of events, but his effort to maintain his distance from the child falls to
pieces when Will and Suzie bring Marcus home, only to find Fiona lying unconscious on the couch in an apparent attempt at
suicide. After a long night at the hospital behaving much more responsibly than is his want, Will goes home and collapses
in his own bed.
While Fiona loves her son very much, she is also a woman who is self-absorbed in her own misery and virtually clueless
about any needs that Marcus may have in order to function in his grade school society with its own rigorous code of behavior.
His clothes are out of style and his hair is cut like a bowl had been placed over his head. He also has the strange habit
of breaking into a quiet song when he retreats into his own fantasy world, sometimes right in the middle of class. None of
this endears him to his classmates, most of whom ignore him while a few of the class bullies either make fun of him or pick
on him.
One afternoon Will answers the knock on his door, only to find Marcus standing there. A testy exchange follows during
which Marcus wheedles his way into Will's flat. Later visits and some detective work on Marcus' part ascertain that Will's
"son," Ned, doesn't exist, so he blackmails Will into letting him visit periodically to watch television and chill
out with this new father figure, no matter how flawed he may be.
One thing Will does understand, however, is the social functioning of grade school kids, so he springs for a pair of cool
new tennis shoes for Marcus. Unfortunately, they are promptly stolen by the school bullies and Marcus has to walk home in
the rain in his socks.
Developments during this period have clued Suzie into the fact that Will is a liar about having a son and was only at
the SPAT meeting to pick women like her up. This has wrecked any potential for romance that Will might have had with her,
so he moves on to other possibilities, one of whom is Rachel [Rachel Weisz, from "The Mummy"(1999)], a very intelligent
woman in the broadcast industry whom he meets at a New Year's Eve party.
She finds him attractive, only "a blank," especially when he is honest with her about not having to work for
a living. Rachel is about ready to write Will off when he starts talking about Marcus. While Will doesn't lie about Marcus
being his son, his conversation would tend to give any normal person that understanding, and this is exactly how Rachel perceives
the situation.
The fact that this relationship makes Will all the more appealing to her also forces Will into a box wherein he is unwilling
to be more truthful about the matter since he finds himself so attracted to Rachel.
Will finds out that his charm and his good looks aren't enough to help him out in this instance, and he turns to Marcus
for help, explaining to the delighted child that he wants Rachel to be "his girlfriend." It seems that Marcus knows
better than Will what is good for him.
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